Last Friday marked the first day of Gov. Sisolak's new mandatory indoor mask order. By all accounts compliance is fairly high. (Which is good) But there are signs that this order could lead to people just not coming. Such is the dance that Governor Pickleball is trying to accomplish, slow the spread of COVID-19 in the State while keeping the life-blood pumping. Results from May and June showed record gambling hauls, which is good for the budget, but rumors and tales of %40+ cancellation rates at some casinos have some worried.
What Vegas does not want, and I'm not sure it can handle, is another lockdown. In fact, I'm not sure that a second wide-spread American lockdown results in the same country coming out as we had coming in. These are perilous times for the City, the State and the Country. How our elected ruling class chooses to handle this is very important.
This is a blog that focuses mainly on gaming, Las Vegas hotel/casinos and sports. But I do realize that there is a political undercurrent to everything and I will address these issues without being partisan. In this case, there are many within the Vegas community that are just starting to regain their financial footing and ripping the floor out beneath of them in the form of a second shutdown would be catastrophic. Couple this with Congress' inability to address the evection issue and a settling of the market seems imminent. For all of those screaming at Biden, I don't see how he's really at fault on this one given that the SCOTUS has all but tied his hands. The bad guys here are the people who made the decisions that lockdowns were the way to go initially, and that shuttering businesses, throttling travel and pretty much decimating the service industry were the way to curb the pandemic, despite these options never being in America's pandemic toolkit before.
In short, we looked at what China did and said "Hey, that might be a good idea" forgetting that America's government works much differently than Chinas and, despite what Professor Doctor Hotez thinks, we cannot deploy the military to enforce a National lockdown where people are being welded into their apartments.
While masks might provide some protection (to be perfectly honest, the jury is still out on that) what we know does work, social distancing and capacity restraints, are something the casinos want to avoid as well. I can guarantee you that the last thing they want to do is shut down 1/2 of the slot machines and be forced to put the Plexiglass dividers back up.
Then there is the problem of the shows. Packed arenas create super-spreader opportunities due to a large amount of contact time and tight spaces. But, as we've seen, the shows are not profitable at 50% capacity and some shows cannot operate with guests wearing masks.
What does all of this mean?
For one, our hopes that the availability of the vaccines meant that this whole mess was over was probably a little over optimistic and naive. There was always going to be a large portion of the population who was vaccine resistant to one degree or another, and it seems that "victory" in this war has been falsely defined by the ruling class as "zero COVID" which was always a bad metric.
The goal here should be to manage COVID-19 to where it becomes a danger on par with seasonal flu. The only way to get there is through a combination of contact immunity and vaccinations. At that point, when herd "immunity*" is reached, then all restrictions should come to an end.
My worry however, is that they won't. COVID has become a political animal and several in the ruling class have realized that they can use their new-found power to advance political goals, move society unwillingly in directions they think it should go and punish unfavored industries. This is a political problem that's not going away, and it might radically alter the future of Las Vegas.
To what extent is the question we're all asking now.
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